“Perhaps she was both child and woman, darkness and light, past and present, life and death - all the opposites contained and reconciled in her.”
— Paule Marshall
I told my mother that I wanted to be a writer when I was around 11.
But, I told her that I wanted to be "behind the scenes."
Photo by Wreiko Dawson
For all these years, I have been studying and honing my craft, working as a journalist and editor ushering in other people's stories, teaching others how to write and read deeply, all things I've loved. Now, I feel myself emerging from behind the veil. There are stories that I was born to tell, and I am now fully invested in owning this and stepping into it.
I grew up poor in the South, but rich in experience. The land, the people, the dialects, the stories, the spirituality -- all of that influenced me deeply, helped mold me as a writer. I was able to go to college, study journalism, became the first Black and first woman editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper. I started a career in newspaper journalism after college, but my deepest dream was to write books, always.
I left my full-time newspaper reporting job in New Orleans just before the year 2000. I started freelancing for local and national publications while part of a powerful creative and cultural writing group. I moved to Los Angeles in 2001 to pursue the MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University. After graduating, I combined my love for writing and children and started teaching journalism, literature, and composition at high schools in Highland Park and South L.A.
I have also worked as a college applications advisor, senior writer for an education non-profit, community relations manager for the Dodgers, and am currently editor in chief of L.A. Parent magazine. I’m excited to publish my first full-length book, We Are Bridges, with Feminist Press!
“Cassandra Lane writes with the urgency driven to the page by the necessities of that first great art: motherhood. We Are Bridges is a book of history, and as such, it uncovers and recovers the truths no classroom teacher will ever reveal to the children who need to know them most: “Let the dead bury the dead, Jesus said, but here I am: guilty of pining after my dead. Not knowing one’s story is like being buried alive.” More than that, it is a love story, a book of how—in spite of every obstacle—black people still make themselves vulnerable enough to take the leap and fall in (and survive!) love.”
- JERICHO BROWN, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Tradition